


Candelight

by PostcardsfromTheoryland



Series: December Fic Prompts [9]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Fluff, Foster Kid Keith (Voltron), Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Power Outage, Pre-Kerberos Mission, Storms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:34:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28042488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PostcardsfromTheoryland/pseuds/PostcardsfromTheoryland
Summary: Three months into living with his new foster family, some of Keith's fears come to light.
Relationships: Keith & Shiro (Voltron)
Series: December Fic Prompts [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2037385
Comments: 4
Kudos: 60





	Candelight

**Author's Note:**

> I've just sort of accepted that this is a challenge I can't do on the nights I'm at work, so I'm going to need to scale back from daily fics. Hopefully the ones I actually have the mental capacity to write will make up for it :)

The night starts out fine enough. Keith has been living with Shiro and Adam for about three months now, and it’s been fine. (It’s not fine, it’s much better than that, but still it’s only been three months and he doesn’t really want to get his hopes up that this will be more permanent than his previous foster families). Things are fine, but it’s still a little awkward to sit out in the living room after dinner, especially since Adam is gone right now on a shuttle trip to one of the Mars bases. So after dinner (and after Shiro had annoyingly asked if all of Keith’s homework was done) Keith had migrated to the bedroom with a book about space he’d gotten from Commander and Dr. Holt for Christmas. Sometimes after dinner, he and Shiro and maybe Adam would go on hoverbike rides, but Shiro had said the weather report didn’t look good tonight. Better to stay indoors than get stuck outside in a storm.

So it really shouldn’t be a surprise when, with a loud crack of thunder, the power suddenly cuts off, and he’s left in a pitch black room. The Garrison has generators, of course, but unless it’s a real emergency, they’re only used for the actual campus itself. On-base houses just have to deal with it until the power comes back on.

Keith…really doesn’t like this. As a little kid he’d been fine with the dark, but then the Montgomerys had taken to locking Keith in the cellar when he did something they claimed was bad behavior, and suddenly Keith had developed a fear of the dark, a fear of the unknown. And then the storm on top of it: he’s never liked loud, unexpected noises, and his dad had drilled into him the dangers of a storm out in the desert, where a flashflood could be deadly. Keith logically knows that nothing would happen here; the Garrison had constructed all of their facility, the housing included, to handle anything the desert could throw at it.

Doesn’t make it any less scary, though.

It’s stupid, he’s not a little kid, and he definitely doesn’t want Shiro (and consequently Adam, whenever he gets back) to know he’s afraid of the dark and a little storm. He’ll just ride it out. The clock on the bedside table is obviously not on, but he thinks it’s late enough that he can just go to bed. Maybe he can sleep through the storm.

Try as he might, though, he can’t help but flinch at each flash of lightning, each crack of thunder, each time the wind picks up enough to thrash against the side of the house. He’s listening so intently to the storm that he gasps and nearly falls backward out of bed when there’s a knock on the bedroom door.

“Keith?” Shiro asks before opening the door just a crack. His voice drops down to a whisper when he realizes Keith is already under the covers. “You asleep?”

Keith hesitates, not sure whether Shiro’s presence would make this less or more awful, and he waits long enough that Shiro is already closing the door with a soft “Goodnight, buddy” and Keith suddenly knows he very much doesn’t want to be alone right now.

“Shiro!” It’s a near-shout, awkwardly loud before it’s drowned out by another clap of thunder.

“Hey, sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“I wasn’t asleep,” Keith admits.

“Want to come sit in the living room with me?” Shiro mercifully doesn’t comment on his non-answer earlier, and Keith scrambles out of bed to follow the soft glow of Shiro’s tablet.

The living room isn’t actually dark though, and Keith freezes when he spots candles placed strategically around the room, casting soft light on everything along with a subtle scent of vanilla. Maybe it would be better in the bedroom after all, away from the open flames.

God, he’s pathetic, how many things is he afraid of now?

But then he looks closer and he realizes the candles aren’t real – the flames aren’t jumping around as much as they should be, and the smell is just a couple sticks of incense still smoking, but not actively on fire.

“We’ve got a stock of battery-operated candles just for nights like this,” Shiro explains, seeing Keith’s confusion. “The incense is just for the aesthetic.” Shiro leads him to the couch, and though the storm is still raging outside, the light really does help. Shiro comes back less than a minute later with a bowl of chocolates and holds it out to Keith as he sits on the other end of the couch.

“Don’t tell Adam I raided his stash,” Shiro says with a wink. “Figured it was an emergency and all that.”

It’s the good chocolate, the circular ones with stuff in the center, and in the light of the candles Keith searches through until he finds the seasonal mint ones that are his favorite. He doesn’t feel too bad about taking those, since he knows Shiro doesn’t like them and Adam seems kind of ambivalent. Shiro smiles at him and takes the bowl back before unwrapping all the chocolate-covered cherry ones.

Shiro starts cheerfully telling him about previous power outages at the Garrison, ones that mostly involve one of the Holts as opposed to a natural event. It’s no too bad out here, with the candles and Shiro’s stories, but Keith can still see and hear the effects of the storm outside. He jumps at more thunder and feels more than sees Shiro looking at him across the couch.

It never gets really cold in the desert, but it’s still winter, and nighttime, and without the power they don’t have any heat, either. Shiro must be starting to get cold, too, because he reaches behind him for the blanket that lives on the back of the couch and situates everything so it’s covering most of him.

“Want to share?” he asks, holding up the edge of the blanket closer to Keith. “Or I can get another one from the closet if you’d rather have your own.” Keith sort of would like his own, but Shiro looks comfy where he is and it would be more convenient to share. He shrugs and then scoots forward enough to claim the other half of the blanket.

Shiro just continues his story about Matt accidentally shutting off the Garrison’s entire power grid when he tried to boost the satellite aimed out toward Sagittarius in an attempt to recreate the Wow signal. Dealing with the storm and the darkness and everything has sort of made Keith feel brave, and he tentatively leans just close enough that he can feel the edge of Shiro’s sleeve brush against his arm. Over the course of the night, he relaxes gradually as the storm finally abates. That’s the nice thing about storms out here, at least, that they don’t tend to last very long. It’s late when Keith vaguely realizes that he’s slumped against Shiro’s side, but Shiro doesn’t seem to care, still talking softly into the half-light, now telling Keith about the time a stray cat had gotten into the Garrison server room and somehow shut off everyone’s email for a couple days.

Eventually the storm stops completely, and Keith is just barely awake enough to register Shiro slipping out of their blanket cocoon and helping Keith stretch out on the couch. Shiro is gone for a moment, but then returns with the pillow and another blanket off of Keith’s bed and helps Keith get comfortable. Then he quietly putters around the room; he puts Adam’s chocolates back, then throws out the used incense and turns off all the little candles – all except for the one on the coffee table in front of Keith. Then he kneels down, readjusts the blankets one last time, and runs a hand through Keith’s hair.

“Goodnight, bud,” he whispers.

Keith sleeps.


End file.
